While it seemed the nearly decade-long saga of building a new Park City senior center had finally come to an end, plans are once again in flux.
The city had put out a request for proposal last January for a combination senior center and affordable housing project at the current, cramped location in Old Town, on Woodside Avenue. By July, it had selected a developer. The project was meant to address two major problems: lack of space for the city’s growing senior population to hang out and meet others, plus a dearth of affordable housing.
But now, facing a multi-million dollar funding gap — and ending up with options that called for either fewer parking options and less facility space than seniors wanted, or smaller number of new affordable units — officials are considering another route: a parking lot just down the street.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Denise Cucurny, Sharon Locatelli, Rebecca Page and Diane Miller play Mahjong at the Park City Senior Center, on Thursday, June 20, 2024. Seniors have asked for more space, and more parking options, at a new facility.
If the city chooses to instead build on the Mawhinney lot, located across from the city library, that would mean beginning a new request for proposal process and letting the affordable housing project play out separately once the center was finished.
That would push the timeline to break ground on the center to winter 2027, according to materials presented to the Park City Council at a December meeting. Officials had hoped to break ground on the dual project by September.
At a Jan. 9 meeting, City Council members asked staff to look into the feasibility of the lot. And they asked for urgency.
“I feel like we have been spinning,” said Mayor Nann Worel. “We’ll get going a little bit, and then something will happen and we go back.”
“I think we’ve come to a point where we owe it to our seniors and our community to make a decision and then go down that path,” she added.
There are several perks of developing the new center at the Mawhinney lot, said Liz Novack, the senior center’s board president.
She said it’s at a more conspicuous site — instead of tucked away, like the current location — that could incorporate the amount of parking seniors want, plus they could continue using their existing center as the new facility is built.
“Some of us are more patient than others,” Novack said, referencing how long the project has taken. She said that some of their members are already in their 80s and would like to use the new center before they can’t.
”I think sometimes we feel like, ‘Oh gosh, we started to make progress, and now we’re kinda of going backwards,‘ but if it is a better site,” Novack said, “and we get the square footage, and we get the parking and we can stay where we are, that is pretty enticing.”
The seniors had asked for at least 10,000 square feet in the new center, with space for a larger dining room and kitchen, as well as a living room and space to exercise and hold other events.
